Choose Your (Problem) Poison

 

All things have different kinds of problems. If you are working in an area where you're using two domains or more, such as music and technology, you're having to deal with different kinds of problems, instead of just musical or just computer-based problems. 

One of the problems I have with using too much programming in music is that I tend to get bogged down in things that aren't of a musical nature. We have to decide where we want to focus our problem solving so that it's not interfering with creativity. They can't be co-mingled and they tend to slow things down. That's the problem I have with using too much AI in music: we're too focused on the data and programming and not achieving what we originally envisioned. That's what happened on Rifts: why create a programming problem for a musical problem which is more easily resolved by focusing only on the music.

 

I like John Vervaeke's elaborations on flow:

"In our culture we have created flow induction machines. What those machines have are a situation where your skills are constantly improving and the demands on the environment are constantly improving. Flow induction machines have other properties that are very important in them. There's a very tight feedback between what you do and how the environment responds you're getting very clear information..."